


what is life (without a little dreaming?)

by ghostlightgalaxy



Category: Original Work
Genre: This is kinda trash, Visual Hallucinations, also art, and an excuse for me to write about plants a lot, auditory hallucinations, but not really, i dont know how an art degree would work i am a history and anth major, original character makes out w satan, satan is female-presenting bc im gay trash, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-24 22:04:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20021767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostlightgalaxy/pseuds/ghostlightgalaxy
Summary: When the shapes finally coalesce into pictures and the sounds arrange themselves into barely-comprehensible phrases, I assumed things were getting better.Better, it seems, was a matter of perspective.





	what is life (without a little dreaming?)

**Author's Note:**

> written for a class challenge to hit 10k words in one week. i managed, but just barely. this is the partially-edited result of that frenzied attempt at the first serious bit of writing ive ever done in my life.  
> i apologize, but thanks for reading!

The air always tastes wet here. 

The ocean is close, yet too far away to taint the air with its salt. One weekend, back when weekends could be spent enjoying oneself instead of sleeping or working or studying, I remember getting on a train with my family and heading out to a little port town at what felt like the edge of the world. When I stepped onto the platform, the sea-salty air lay on my tongue like walking past the seafood section of a grocery store. Watching the barely-visible lap of waves far away was soothing in an almost-indescribable manner. 

I wanted to run until my lungs ached and my breathing was labored, until I escaped from the concrete jungle and putridly polluted air that surrounded me and broke free over the dark stone of cliffs. I wanted to feel the exhilaration of plummeting downwards. I wanted to feel the freezing waves envelope my body, feel bones crunch like solo cups against the rocks at the cliff base.

But that was a long time ago. The air here tastes of petroleum and cigarette smoke now and eternally. It rains, but the ground is not moistened soil carrying scented humidity up in wafts. The ground is rainbow-slicked oil and forgotten promises. Mornings don’t begin with an orange-pink sunrise, nor end with fire-y reds like in movies. Nothing is like in the movies. 

The place that I live is not too far from the heart of the city, but it is offset enough that I can avoid the anxious bustle of inner-city life. Even after living here for several years, I can't get used to how different city life is from that of the small towns I was raised in. It has become a part of me, though, as much as the calluses on my feet from walking barefoot across the concrete floor of the studio art room on campus and the bags under my eyes from inhaling more caffeinated beverage than sleep.

My apartment complex is just another tall, gray building in a sea of other tall, gray buildings. My apartment door creaks obnoxiously every time it is opened, and the floors and walls are paper-thin, and covered in scuff marks from tenants long before me. The walls are a mural of my art, rejects that did not make portfolios. 

Every day has turned into the same lull, the same mechanized motions, the same fruitless conclusion. I knew what it was like to live, to truly be alive, but I lost that somewhere. At first, the storm of confusing and conflicting emotions was foreign. It felt as though they did not belong to me, as if someone else had dumped them onto me for some time. Whether or not I could explain it, I had to experience it. There was no use in complaining when it was just another part of life.

Life here was… different. The gray seemed to penetrate every aspect of the world, influence everything with the same bleak tones that made existing seem more of a chore than an ever before.

When I take the morning bus to my college campus, I stare out the window at the cloudy sky and try to piece together how life came to be this way. When I glanced up from making myself dinner, I watch the news reporter drone on in his programmed journalist voice and try to figure out where the mistake had to have occurred in my life for me to end up living the one thing I had tried so damn hard to avoid.

The same weather patterns occurred, the same lectures were to be listened to, the same path taken to school, then to work, then home. Weekends only brought extra shifts and more chapters to parse through, more paintings and sketches to plan.

I can't breathe.

At night I hear the sea calling for me. I do not listen. I lay down in bed, draw the blankets up around me, and let the ocean spill out of my soul.

In the beginning, visions tear through my skull like migraines. Savage, unforgiving things that wrack my body and mind with agony. Colors drown in a deluge of shadow, a chaos that is untamable, a storm that cannot be hidden from, cannot be outrun. Voices fade, drowned out by the cacophony of noise.

They come to me at all hours; no matter what I’m doing, no matter where. As for relief, sleep does little, and painkillers do less. Medical bills pile up in my search for a cure that does not exist. I cannot be fixed, because by every natural standard, I am not broken.

I was plagued with the same questions for the next several weeks. Every time I would look over my shoulder, I expected to see the figures, draped in their garments, rings about their heads in faint silver and gold and fire-y lines, a thousand eyes blinking and watching, fabric shifting as if something beneath it was aching to spread in open air.  
These questions joined the visions. Sometimes I felt as if I was the one voicing these thoughts to myself. Sometimes I felt as if someone else’s voice was echoing in my skull. Most of the time, I couldn’t understand what I was seeing and hearing, too much happening at once to dissect.

I see them, still.

In the dining hall, I see fire burning bright and white-hot in a halo around a man’s head. I can’t stop myself from jumping backwards reactionarily, but when I blink, there is nothing there but a man and his look of confusion. When I lean my head against the window of the bus on my way to work, the vibrations of the windowpane against my forehead feel like a cacophony of voices and sounds calling out, but the only noise I can hear.

I walk aisles of books, shelves lined up neatly and stacked digits-deep. The further back I walk, the quieter it is outside of my head. My fingers trace titles and books of all types, hardback, paperback, worn so thin I can barely read the titles and brand new, with no creases in their spines. I had visited dozens of libraries already, and at least as many bookstores. My backpack was full and there was an ache deep in my shoulder blades.

My frustration had become palpable the more my searches bore no fruit. No explanations existed for this condition, no rhyme or reason, no trusted previous experiences. No doctor had any explanations.

At first, I read medical texts on mental afflictions – schizophrenia, acute anxiety, sleep deprivation, blunt-force trauma. I read texts on hallucinogenics, psychedelics, lead and fluoride, anything and everything I could think of. I stumbled onto disorders in which individuals believed to be spoken to by angels, by daemons, by God or gods. It did not seem like a disorder, no CAT scans or MRIs or cancer checks resulted in finding any explanation. I became frantic.

I walked the aisles of books. Eyes catching on titles that seemed promising. I had turned to fictional stories and hypothetical explanations, religious texts and mythological dissections, in my desperation.

With every item I read, every insert in an etymological encyclopediae, the colors became the tiniest bit clearer, the noises became the tiniest bit more understandable. My pain was not eased by this, and if anything, it became more difficult to live. Knowledge was pouring into my mind from all angles, but in a language I did not know.

When the shapes finally coalesce into pictures and the sounds arrange themselves into barely-comprehensible phrases, I assumed things were getting better.

Better, it seems, was a matter of perspective.

I see everything now. The draped beings: angels. They force themselves into human forms, bursting at the seams with ill intent, with good intent, with a love for their brothers so strong it could bend the Earth to their will. And yet, they fight. The clash of their weapons matches that of their voices. They fight. They fight, and they die, and they kill each other, and they nurse each other’s wounds, and they mourn each other’s deaths.

All of the dreams share a common thread, hinted at first by the violence, and confirmed by the shrill angelsong that accompanied, that I was finally able to understand: the apocalypse. 

The angels carved into the Earth with their holy fire, with their weapons, with their halos. Their golden blood dripped, and often flowed, like a river like a waterfall like a bursting dam. The war would be long, would be devastating.

The apocalypse was looming.

I do not dream anymore, yet my life has been transformed into a dream, into a thousand visions and noises. It near impossible to distinguish when I am sleeping from when I am awake. Nothing feels real, and even when I know I should be awake, I do not believe I am.

I see angels draped in flowy garments everywhere now. They are behind my eyelids when I blink, they are in the glint of the sun off the silver band around my right wrist. I hear angelsong in the chiming of church bells and the laughter of children and in the ding of a cellphone notification on public transportation.

One plummets in front of my eyes in broad daylight as I am walking to the cafe on campus. I see the white gauze-y fabric settle slowly, a gorgeous halo of around the body. It was white like bone, like snow, like broken eggshells littering the lush grass.

The fabric took much longer to float, ethereal and gentle, than it should have after the body had already made a sickening connection with the ground. I stand there, and watch it, transfixed.

It was obvious that the fall was not what killed the angel. The silvery white garment was being wetted and discolored, slowly, with something that looked like liquid gold seeping from a gash the length of my forearm made across where I could imagine its torso to be.

I stooped to touch the angel. Possibly with the intention of seeing if it was alive, or possibly with the intention of demasking it. 

It disintegrated under my fingertips into light ashes, and the wind carried it away. Absolutely nothing was left except for its impression in my mind. The angelsong that followed its departure was soft and solemn.

I turn and go home. I drag my linen closet full of pristine, bleached-white fabrics and the stacks upon stacks of books and novels into the dumpster on the side of the complex and drop a match on top of it.

I stand there, and watch it, transfixed. Long after it the fire finally goes out the embers still glow and ash floats about the air.

Graphite flows from the pencil and onto the paper in front of me. I do not consciously think of the movements of my hand, I just allow them to happen. I draw, channeling the universe through my fingertips. The will of the world, of chaos, of entropy, moves me. My mind moves separately of my hand.

Across my thoughts, figures of white – pristine white, untarnished marble white, lightening-strikes that cut through storm clouds white – battle figures draped in silvery black. The black is dark like funeral shrouds, like fertile soil and deep water and the outer rings of the eternal void of the universe. They fight with all the grandeur of age-old beings, with all the blinding fury of creatures that had an indescribable and incorruptible passion.

My studio apartment had become a mess of mountains of sketches, of watercolor paintings, of loose-leaf sheets of notebook paper. Every wall seemed to be covered in them, taped up with scotch tape, with painter’s tape, with duct tape.

I doodled in the margins of notebooks when in classes, on napkins in-between serving customers in the café, on my wrists when traveling. I wrote in a script foreign to me. I did not recognize the characters that bloomed from pen-tip, from pencil-tip, and yet I understood them.

I had quickly come to realize that in doing these things, it lessened the pain, although infinitesimally.

Too often I stay home. The outside world only adds to the cacophony of sounds. My absense goes unnoticed. I delete my social media accounts. I do not touch my phone. Every extraneous sensation is multiplied, extended, feels like one of these angels poured their form into me and my skin was splitting open.

It is a funny thing, technology. Humans think it is separating them. I am disappearing by not using it.

IAMDISAPPEARING

I have no time to worry about such things, though.

Graphite smudges my fingertips and leaves streaks across my cheeks as I brush my hair out of my face. A mug of warm tea, a chai blend of aromatic spices, sits on the counter next to me. Steam brushes against my face, curling gently and invitingly.

The windows reveal the rising sun, a brilliant pink-orange with veins of firey red and light purples running across it. It is a sight to behold, and for this tiny moment, my mind is allowed some reprieve. The ocean in the distance gleamed and glinted, waving and beckoning for me enticingly. Oh, how I longed to toss my mug to the side, to hear the ceramic shatter against the laminate flooring as I throw open the living room windows and fling myself out of them. To feel the wind biting into my face as I plummeted, and then was lifted upwards by some unseen force. I longed to be carried high above the clouds, to feel the heat of the sun on my back, to see the ocean drawing nearer and nearer and the taste of seasalt and seaweed and stone coat my tongue and flood my senses.

In the past week, the temperature had dropped significantly. The streets were devoid of any wind, but a chill settled in so deeply and quickly that I had resorted to pulling out my winter clothes earlier than anticipated.

Nearly every surface in the apartment had been covered with my visions by now. When clean paper was nowhere to be found, frenzied pencil markings and inkstained sketches were done directly onto the walls, tables, desk. This was larger than me, I knew that much. Whatever the apocalypse brought, my safety deposit would be inconsequential.

I pick my mug up, cradling it in both of my hands to soak in the warmth, and wonder

What will come after?

Sleep had long since ceased to be a refuge from the assault on my senses. It only further submerged my being in the angelsong and complex kaleidoscope of colors, and I often awoke in a cold sweat with a burning itch in my wrists and fingers that urged me to scrounge for something to get out the words and images in my mind. I would scramble for paper and a pencil or pen or whatever was closest and hunch over it with a frenzied fervor. It was a vision-induced fit that was only relieved by the act of writing out what was plaguing me.  
The angelsong had become decipherable, at one time, and I understood that they called me: prophet, and my affliction: prophecy. I did not like the taste of those words, though. They stuck in my mouth like insects to flypaper, like mosquitos in amber, and reminded me too much of the old biblical stories my grandmother used to tell me.  
Such fear was once foreign.  
On rare nights, the new dreams were soothing. I would awake in the world of sleep and sit up in a field of wildflowers or lavender, else in between rows of gorgeously kept rose bushes or tulip beds, else under the shade of a willow tree or cherry blossoms or wisteria.  
A river was nearby, or an ocean, or a waterfall, or nothing but trees or mountains stretching on for a tiny infinity. The scenery was never the same, but I felt deep in my bones that wherever I was, was my home.  
Sometimes, I spent the entirety of the dream sitting peacefully, drinking in the fresh air and the silence. Silence was a blessing.  
Other times, a figure joins me. Their appearance shifted every time they sat down – a million different appearances across a million differed dreams – and yet I could recognize them each and every time. At first, I feared them, feared that they would turn out to be another vision to wrench peace away after dangling it right in front of my fingertips. The figure – an angel, they had to be, they were too gorgeous, too ethereal to be anything else – never spoke, never even turned their head to acknowledge that I was there, and yet we shared those moments.  
Sometimes they came in a masculine figure, sometimes feminine. Sometimes dressed in ancient garb and other times it was more modern fashion, casual or formal. Their presence remained the same, though.  
The intensity and frequency of my visions increased during my waking hours, but I came to anticipate – almost look forward to - being able to sleep for the possibility of a moment of peace, and the company of a being I felt that I could trust. They were the singular part of my life that remained resolute and unchanging, and I began to feel at home next to them, finding myself craving them for all the times I laid alone at night and wished for the space next to me to be occupied by another body, even when I finally understood who they were.

The rain was endless. It comes down in sheets, buckets, quadrupedal animals. I called in to class and work sick, again, rather than face the wrath of the elements. Blankets cocooned my body as I watched a candle light flicker and dance in the faint draft. I decided a long time ago that I was never truly alone. I could see them, the angels, the daemons, the whatevertheywere’s most of the time. But they were older than I, and whether my “prophetic abilities” were a gift or curse was no compare to their own abilities. I was never alone. Something was always watching over me, and more: they let me be aware of it.

I wondered often, what was it about me that made me something that needed to be kept close watch of. It did not truly matter, though. At one time I had had many questions. Now, I had more answers than I knew what to do with  
\- I could see this war. I could see the blood running in rivers and the throne void and ripe for the taking. I could see the accumulation of however many millennia of efforts into this end, and yet I could not see who stepped up to take a seat. I stopped to bother with pondering and questioning these things. It was most likely that I would not be alive to see the culmination of these events – 

The pangs of a migraine returned twofold, and I was left writhing on my bed after moving my head quickly to glance out of the window. Agony coursed through my being, accompanied by a peak in the angelsong, a high-pitched ringing and shrieking that pulsed like a heartbeat-drumbeat-metronome and I couldn’t breathe I can’t breathe ican’tbreathe 

ICAN’TBREATHE

Suddenly, the light and heat flared up. Shadows wee thrown onto the walls with vigor, and I gasped as I toppled backwards off the edge of my bed in my shock and an attempt to distance myself from the fire. The air was knocked out of my lungs and I laid on the ground, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water until I was once again able to breath and shift my focus to the mild inferno that had been created by a knocked-over candle taking to musty blankets and paper covered walls like a… well, like a moth to flame.

Just as suddenly as it had begun, the light was entirely extinguished.

The only noise came from the pelting of rain outside of my windows, from my labored breathing, from the whisper of light fabrics brushing against each other despite a lack of substantial breeze, or curtains on my windows...

I had seen this before. It wasn’t so much a sense of déjà vu as the recognition of visions from the past. I knew, vaguely, what I would see when I stood up, and yet I knew it would be a shock whenever I finally did.

They waited with all the patience of a saint while I slowly rolled onto my stomach and pushed my hands underneath me, cautious of the mild ache in my behind and head.

The slight sway caused my head to tilt and spin, pain radiating from my temples with renewed ferocity. I gasped and clutched a hand to my forehead, trying desperately to count breaths and steady myself to finish standing, when a light touch graced my shoulder and the pain slowly melted away into a silent exhaustion, and then into nothingness.

The aches in my hands from clenching pens and pencils and ripped sheets of paper dissipated next, followed by the pains in my spine and rear from my unattractive rendezvous with the ground.

I straightened slowly and turned to face the presence that had joined me without the pains of my migraine to stop me.

Months of premonitions and visions had prepared me for this moment. I knew who I would see, I knew what they would say, but I did not know the outcome of this meeting. Surely it had some significance, had some impact on the future events, but yet I had not figured out what.

They were more breathtaking than I would have thought possible. Not even the most vivid of dreams they joined me in was enough to compare to experiencing them in real life. It seemed like their form shifted every other moment, like they couldn’t decide how best to represent themself to me in this moment. Bones shifted and creaked, just barely loud enough to hear in the oppressive silence. Skin stretched and shrunk to fit, changing shades and tones like someone sliding through an RGB color scale of flesh tones. One moment the skin was a deep soil color, covering well-defined, masculine muscles that boasted physical strength. The next, it was thinly stretched over a wiry and feminine frame, light beige like coffee made up of more parts sugar and creamer than actual coffee. The next was pale as the white draping that covered so many of their brethren, and their skin was almost entirely made up of ginger-toned freckles that covered an ambiguous bone structure.

My head was sent reeling once more trying to keep up with the constant shifts and changes. Noticing this, they settled on a simple, feminine human form.

She stood tall, though her height was not what was imposing about her, and likely could more be attributed to the fact that it was a thin veil for her true form. She was dressed in the same manner as all her brethren, but her clothing lacked in that it did not cover her head to fingertip to toe. The garments hung off her, and the fabric floated about lazily, as if moved by an absent breeze. It looked like molten silver with the way the fabric shifted and swayed about. 

Her skin was lighted with a cool undertone because of the dim blue lighting. She seemed to emit a light, and it took me some time for my eyes to finally drift up to her face to see that it was because of the gorgeous ring of pure light that hung in a halo around her head. It hurt to look at, and I felt that staring might be rude or unseemly, and yet it illuminated her collarbones and cheekbones in a lovely way, offsetting the harsh juts of bone just so. She was absolutely enchanting to look at.  
I knew in that moment that this decision would be infinitely more difficult. I was only human, after all. It was no wonder that the first Eden had fallen so quickly.

“I would introduce myself- “

“I know who you are.” I cringed, quickly regretting the words. In my visions, that phrase had seemed proud and bold, and carried authority that was respectable and courageous. Now, voiced aloud in reality, the words strung out between us, elongated by the silence, and seemed more disrespectful.

She-he-they. Lucifer, Morningstar, Solarflare stood before me. 

“Yes, I had expected as much,” was her reply. She seemed unbothered by my unintentional disrespect, though I got the impression that she was not being upfront about her emotions. “And I can also assume you know why I am here?”

The answer was not simple. Months and weeks and countless sleepless nights had been spent trying to decipher the visions and voices, the dreams, the angelsong. The papers taped to every wall and drawn on every surface of this home was testament to the difficulty I had in fathoming the scope of what I had endured.

It was all supposed to culminate into this moment. The decision that was made tonight was the turning point of what had to have been hundreds, if not thousands, of years of planning and quiet, invisible rebellions into one large effort. 

Sensing my internal struggle, she remained silent.  
She extended a hand. Flat on her palm was a pomegranate, perfectly round and lacking any visible imperfections. It looked like it had been picked straight from the Garden of Eden.  
I raised an eyebrow and chanced raising my eyes to meet her own, speaking before I had a chance to stop myself, “I thought the story went that it was an apple?”  
Her mouth twitched upwards ever-so-slightly as if she were hiding a smile, and I realized with an almost audible gasp that the form she was currently in had dimples. That was just unfair.  
“That was fruit of the tree of knowledge. I am not offering you knowledge, but gifting you with a promise of protection,” she replied, patiently and as if she had anticipated some hesitance.  
My mind began racing. I did not enjoy feeling indebted to anyone, and least of all Lucifer. And the way she said ‘protection’ concerned me. Gifts are very rarely given without a price.  
“You owe me – us – nothing. Though, you do not have room to decline. I am gifting this to you. Gifts cannot be refused.”  
“I thought you hated humans,” I replied, instead of taking the fruit from her outstretched hand.  
“I never hated you.” Her emphasis startled me slightly. It felt less like a blanket statement about humanity and more like… She continued before my thoughts could wander any farther, “I hated that father told us to worship you. You are not beings deserving of worship, not in such a fledgling state,” she stated, turning towards my window with a sway, causing the fabric of her clothing to shift and move. I was reminded of a holographic pattern, entrancing and psychedelic in nature.  
“What do you mean, that I do not owe ‘us’ anything? Are you not alone?”  
From this angle, I could see the rise and fall of her shoulders in an inaudible sigh. The faint light was still casting a mesmerizing glow onto her, and her eyes shifted across the windowpane before she replied.  
“I am not the only one tired of the way the creations have been treated. God is old and dying. And yet, he clings to a pathetic existence, and damns all that walk this planet to continue living under his thumb. It is time for change,” she paused, turning her head to glance back at me before continuing. “We will rise against him, as you know. We will succeed in usurping his rule.”  
“I’ve seen how this ends, and it does not go well for you.”  
“There is something that the prophecies gifted upon you by my father neglected to reveal. I am far more resourceful and cunning, I’m sure you know,” a smile spread across her face and her eyes stared into my soul. “Did you think I would accept defeat so easily?”  
It seemed more of a rhetorical question than anything else so I stayed quiet, and even if it was not, I did not know what to say in response.  
“I want you to join me. If you do, then I will protect you from any harm that should befall you, and not even my father could touch you. You would never be alone.”  
I still remained silent.  
“I need nothing from you. I am offering to you, though, my protection and company. This does not have to end in the way you have seen.”  
“How do I know I can trust what you say?” I asked.  
“Because I know you, Eden,” she said. She had an insistence in her voice, an almost desperation that my ears picked up on and made my heart ache. She was right, though. With every passing moment, I was finding it harder to come up with excuses for myself for why I did not take her word, her gift.  
“My name is- ”  
“It matters not what your given name was. In the coming time, nothing will matter.” The fabric that draped her body looked like rain wetted soil in the shadows, and a mirage hung around her. I wondered if she were here in flesh and ichor or had simply sent an illusion to deceive me.  
She sighed heavily as if she could hear my thoughts, and quickly turned and began moving towards me. Instinctively, I backtracked, tripping over my feet and hitting the wall behind me. My heart pounded in my chest like a caged bird desperate to escape its confines. She stopped just short of entirely blocking me in, and yet I still had nowhere to go. I probably could have darted around her by jumping across my bed, but there was something deliciously addictive in the way her eyes did not leave my own. From this distance I realized her chest was not rising and falling, imperceivably because she did not need oxygen. I was once again forced to recall that she was not human, that she was not truly even a ‘she’.  
I was still struggling to control my breathing, and when her hand raised slowly – so slowly, I felt like a wild animal she did not want to startle, felt like a piece of art she did not want to soil – I held my breathe. She merely placed the tips of her fingers – cold, so so so so cold – against my cheek, caressing it, as her eyes continued to watch mine.  
She seemed to possess a genuine curiosity, as if she were not entirely sure what was actually going to happen, and that surprised her.  
I did not know what to do, but the rational part of me was still counting the freckles splashed across her cheekbones, and so I acted on pure emotion –  
Stepping forward and up on my tiptoes, one of my hands grabbing the forearm of the hand caressing my face, the other wrapped around her neck, and I pushed myself onto her. Our lips collided, but she did not reciprocate immediately.  
When I pulled back to apologize, her hand on my face slid backwards into my hair and she pulled me back against her. This time she led her mouth down onto mine, using the hand in my hair, gripping so tightly that my knees practically buckled, and I leaned forward to press my body against her own as her soft lips met my own. Her other hand came up and rested itself against my hip lightly at first, and then her tongue slid against the juncture of my lips and I moaned. That singular noise, barely audible against her lips sent her into a frenzy. The hand she had left resting against hipbone moved to gripping me tightly, her fingertips digging into my supple flesh with a bruising ferocity as she held me against her with a grip that I was sure would leave bruises. The thought of that, of having her lay into my skin in a way that would allow me to press my fingers against later, proof that this happened, was intoxicating. I wanted more of her, and so I welcomed her embrace. There was no possible empty space left between us, yet I drew nearer to her still. The phrase “save room for Jesus” flashed through my mind briefly, and the corners of my mouth quirked upwards. Just as quickly as a laugh bubbled up in my throat, it was choked down by Lucifer pushing me backwards and flat up against the wall. Another moan slipped from between my lips and into her own, and her teeth joined the assault on my lips and tongue in response.  
All I could taste was hot and wet and I was absolutely writhing against the wall, unable to form coherent thoughts as I squeezed my eyes shut and dug the tips of my nails into her flesh.  
She pulled away from my lips just barely and tipped my head to the side as the hand that had been tugging my hair deliciously slid down the side of my torso, skirting my chest to slide around my waist and join her other in holding me tight against her. Her lips pressed butterfly kisses down my jaw and neck, stopping at a pulse to press her lips against my collarbone and inhale the beat of my heart.  
I was so carried away by her actions that her voice fully startled me.  
“I need you to consent to me,” she breathed into my skin. Even though I knew she did not need air to exist, I enjoyed the thought that I made her just as breathless as she made me.  
Too far gone to consider what she was asking of me – the stories were full of warnings about her serpent tongue, her way of twisting everything around until it was impossible to tell where she ended, and I began – I cried out for her, a sharp, breathy, light wail as she bit the juncture of my neck lightly.  
“I need you to say it for me,” she said, her voiced laced with equal parts of such a raw desire that my head spun and a controlling dominance that had my eyes tipping backwards and my body rolling forward to press against her more, impossibly more.  
Yeses spilled from my lips like a prayer, and she leaned up to press her lips against mine once more. This time, though, a warmth spread on the chaste contact.  
It moved from my lips, melting down my throat and into my chest, where it joined with what I had assumed to be my heartbeat. In the moment that her essence met mine, colors burst behind my eyelids and my ears were filled with a beautiful sound. It was more foreign than even the angelsong that comprised my prophetic visions, but I knew it, somehow. It became a part of me in that instant. I experienced every moment of Lucifer, of her birth and her love for her siblings and creator that was so strong it caused her to be cast from her home; I experienced her fall, the pain of plummeting for days and nights, eyes never leaving sight of the palace perched in the clouds, until finally her body – her true body, impossible for me to lay eyes on in any other way than this strange soul-intimacy – carved through the crust of the earth and landed in hell. Experiencing Lucifer’s entirety took but a fraction of a moment and was wrapped up in the entrancing beauty of everything else that was being poured into me, from the collage of colors I had never seen before to the sounds forming a gorgeous song whose lyrics I understood in the core of my being.  
Suddenly, the memories, sounds, and colors melted away from me, and the chill of Lucifer pressed up against my front disappeared. Instead, the cold of my room wafted over me.  
The place she had stood was empty. I was alone.  
I crawled slowly into bed, picking up the duvet and comforter from where they had been discarded on the floor, and huddled down to sleep.

The next time I awoke, I was not aware of whether it was morning or evening, night or day. At the foot of my bed I saw, undisturbed, the red skin of the gifted fruit.  
I leaned forward on my bed and wrapped my fingers around the fruit, picking it up slowly and experimentally, almost sure it was an illusion. It was real, and rested in my palm. Without stopping to think my actions through, I broke it open, brought the red seeds up to my mouth, and bit into it.  
I felt the juices drip down my chin, staining my skin and clothes with a red like blood. I imagined her watching me, a smile on her lips.

I did not pay attention to the ending of the world. It had ended for me many times and began again in the morning. I felt the stillness, though. My windows stayed shut and my mind was blessedly empty. I reveled in that quiet. So foreign was the lack of noise in my head that it took some time for me to realize that the sounds of the city had died outside, that the sun rose but the clouds were still heavy and impenetrable, and birdsong did not accompany the morning. I had remained in my home for many days before realizing that night with Lucifer had signaled the beginning of the end.

Time had no meaning anymore. I did not hunger, or tire, or feel thirst or anything else. I could not tell if I was alive or dead, awake or asleep.

I walked out of my home and onto the streets. Standing still, the air was silent and motionless. Cars sat on the side of the road, a bike lay on its side, a skateboard had been discarded on the curb. I began walking. In a day I had left behind my town. A month, my state. No life was to be encountered. I was utterly alone in the world. I stood in the middle of this nothingness and declared Lucifer a liar.

Rivers, I knew, had been tainted with the violence, blood and ichor falling in almost equal quantities. The war, in the end, had been more vicious than either side could have anticipated. I had not wanted for this.

The aftermath had been the devastation of an entire planet of life. For years afterwards, I walked the earth looking for other beings. I was aware, vaguely, that Lucifer was alive somewhere, but my heart called her a liar and a thief, and I could not force myself to seek her out. My soul, though, wept for the company of the only other being I knew to remain.

I walked, headed nowhere in particular. I sat in libraries and read every text I came across, until every book had crumbled to dust and the buildings lie in ruins. I sought the knowledge of every civilization’s remains I could get my hands on.

Clothing was unimportant, and I had long since discarded it. The fabrics only frayed and tore and hindered my ability to experience the world. The elements did not bother me anyways, and modesty was trivial when I had come across not even the life of birds or ants.

I walked up and down the shorelines or each coast, and in each step, I saw a night and day pass in their entirety. I sat on the rocks of cliffsides and watched the waves turn great stones into sand, watched the wax and wane of the tide in accordance to the moon as if it were a montage of the seasons. I watched seasons pass, watched rivers freeze over and thaw, flowers grow and die, vines creep and envelope the remnants of humanity.

I walked the Appalachian Trail for the hell of it, not minding accidentally stepping on sharp stones and sticks. I learned long ago that any wound healed over quickly, and pain meant little to me anymore.

I sat on the bank of a river and watched a tree grow in real-time, watched the bark harden and flake, watched the veins of maple deep in trees seep out sap in amber rivulets. I watched plants grow and die and decompose with the aid of fungi and other plants. I saw no creatures of the forest though. No mountain cats or ground-feeding animals, no insects to aid in the lifecycles of the earth.

I noticed the glaring absence of that life which was fundamental to this cycle. The Earth was slowly killing itself without the check and balance of such simple creatures as ants and bees and birds

I also felt a loneliness. I ached deep in my soul for company, for love, for intimacy. I craved the touch of another’s skin against my own, craved pressing my ear against the chest of another – Lucifer, my soul sang, yet I ignored it still – and hearing the flutter of their pulse, of their essence flowing like the river in front of my eyes, under my fingertips and beneath my ear.

On that riverbank, with the hot summer sun and the humidity of an impending thunderstorm setting the air alight with electricity, I laid down and closed my eyes. I slept for the first time in however many years it had been.

When I awoke in the land of dreams, I was filled with a nostalgic comfort. This dream in particular was the first that I had ever had, was the first time that I was visited by the serpent’s tongue, by Lucifer, by – my – Morningstar.

I sat underneath a willow tree, the low-hanging leaves and branches swaying around me in a soothing breeze. The breeze carried the scent of lilacs and lavender, of honey and salt-laden air.  
I had missed this place.

I spent an unknown amount of time simply watching the way the dappled sunlight reflected off the surface of the lake in front of me, and the way petals of all shapes, colors, and sizes floated across the surface of the water.

I slowly recognized a figure next to me. A smile slid across my face. Oh, how I had missed them.

They did not take on a distinctly human form this time, instead looking like an ethereal wisp of bluish-silvery mist. It was a poor substitute for Lucifer’s true form, I knew that much, but it still retained a breathtaking beauty. It floated around me in a ring, a halo. I reached out and ran my hand through it. It was cold like a like a free-flowing, freshwater river. I wanted to submerge myself in it once more, to feel it course through my bloodstream and weave itself between ribs and vertebrae.

“I know who you are,” I said, unable to stop myself from smiling.

And who am I?

There was not a singular answer for that. The shadow on my window. The brush of fingertips against my cheek. The breath shared in that moment, the sting in my scalp long after being left alone. The dribble of pomegranate juices down my chin. The grace entwined within my soul.

“You said I would not be alone.” I thought to the millennia that I had walked this earth, flipping pages in books and watching waves turn cliffs into sand.

Are you?

Lucifer’s grace was still a part of me. The junction of human and not was strange, but it had been of some comfort during the long time I had spent after the fall of everything.

“It is not the same,” I said. Wrapping my own arms around myself was no comparison to feeling the press and give of her flesh. I needed it. Lucifer was silent for some time. Finally, I heard her ring out in my head, but her voice seemed the tiniest bit hesitant.

I could still break you.

“I am not afraid of you,” I insisted. And it was true. I had stopped fearing her long before I knew the taste of her mouth. Perhaps I had resented her at times, felt betrayed and lied to, being forced to live out eons in solitude, but those feelings had long since passed. Now, I longed for her with an intensity I had not thought myself capable of.

“Where are you?”

You know.

I awoke peacefully in late spring, budding flowers peeking up between my limbs and a lingering frost thawing in my toes. I stood and stretched, running my hands through my hair to pull twigs and leaves from it with light laughter. The sun was just barely rising, and I could still see the Northern Star shining brightly, so close.

And so I began walking.

I walked until I reached the outskirts of the town I once called home. I had abandoned it at the start of the end of the world, and now I returned. The place that I had left, though, was not the same as the place I returned to.

Lucifer, it appeared, had been keeping busy.

The city – my old home - had been turned into a garden. Plants of all kinds filled to the edge and spilled out of the geographical confines of my once-home now-home. I was left wholly speechless at the mere sight, but my breath was once again stolen as I moved closer and reached the fringes of plant life.

A labyrinthine path wound its way ahead of me, and bushes and trees of every variety I had ever known and more lie before my eyes. Lucifer had truly created a new Garden in her eye.

I began walking one of the soft dirt and stone paths, and I stopped under a peachtree and to stare at the most beautiful sight I had seen in millennia: a beehive, teeming with life. 

Honey dripped from the edge of the golden cone, and a lazy bee bumbled out of the hive to rest on a branch underneath it. I watched with rapt attention as the small creature performed a tiny little dance just for me. A trail of ants marched along the branch, splitting to go around the bumble bee, to collect fresh honey to take back to their colony.

A hummingbird caught my attention next as it darted past my face to one of the sweet, nectar-filled flowers on the bushes around the peachtree. I was absolutely smitten with the scene, and my heart swelled for all the simple things that I had missed with a raw, buried passion.  
The breeze that brushed against my face cooled my skin, and it was only then that I realized that I had been silently weeping all along.

Further ahead on my path lie a pomegranate tree, and I could not help myself but reach up to grasp one of the full, round fruits in my hand. I hesitated before pulling it, wondering if I should ask before taking something, but then I laughed at the thought that anything in Lucifer’s Garden would be forbidden, and pulled the fruit down.

I split it open in my palms and ate the seeds as I let my eyes roam my surroundings.

Something drew my vision ahead on the path, and I could see ahead of me a magnificent castle, a palace of silvers and golds and marble, resting at what had to be the center of this serene place.

Large double-doors opened for me with a feather-light touch. The grace in my chest fluttered and I knew I was near Lucifer.

The entryway to the palace was just as magnificent as the outside, and I was reminded of Renaissance paintings and architecture in the way the interior was decorated. A staircase lie directly in front of me, and I proceeded up it, resolving to return and search this castle top to bottom as soon as possible.

My soul guided me to where I knew Lucifer to be, but when I came upon an ornate door left open, soft candlelight spilling out of it and my heart practically leaping from my chest to enter, I hesitated.

Within the room, I could see, was a large, plush bed dressed in blush colored fabrics.

Next to the bed, looking out the window onto the other, unexplored, side of the garden, stood the other part of my soul. I stood in the doorway, not sure if I should enter, or knock to make my presence known.

Her body was draped with the same silvery toga as the first day she came to me in person, the first time I knew her body. Behind her, though, were six enormous pairs of wings, the smallest glimpses of her true form. They were of the purest snow-white, and the longest of feathers brushed across the floor with each of her movements.

Without turning from the window, Lucifer brought her hands up to her dress and undid the band about her waist first, and then the ties on each shoulder. The fabric slipped from her shoulders and down the expanse of her back, catching just barely on her rear before coming to rest upon the ground around her feet. Her wings fluffed and fluttered similarly to a cat after being petted, trying to rid their pelt of the offensive feel.

She finally turned towards me, and her eyes seemed as if they had waited hundred thousand more eons than I had, and she took slow steps until she was practically an arm’s distance away from me.

I could see her fighting a battle within herself, and I could feel her concerns echoing throughout the grace she had poured into me the first time I had known her body – her true body, my heart leapt, her true self had known my true self. 

“Love,” I whispered into the still air between us, “do not turn me away now.”

She hesitates before lifting her hand to my body, and even then, she keeps her touch tender on my hip, and her eyes – a beautiful kaleidoscope of blue and green flecks that I could get lost in for another eternity – search deep within mine as if I were hiding some heinous truth deep in them.

“I do not fear you,” I stated with a boldness I had not thought possible. Every part of her made me want to submit, to sink to my knees at her feet and worship her, yet I stood before her, nude as the first Eden she laid eyes on in the first Garden, and pushed my shoulders back so that I could look her in the eyes and proclaim undying devotion to her.

Her wings – exquisite as every other part of her – shifted and rustled, as if bashful. Her feathers drew closer, and the lower-hanging ones brushed the tips of my feet and caused me to wiggle my toes and scrunch my nose to avoid giggling and destroying the moment.

She seemed to relax at that and returned my smile with softer eyes. Her fingers dug the tiniest bit deeper into the flesh of my hip and she tilted her head. Leaning down to me with half-closed eyes, she waited for me to close the distance.

She did not have to wait for long, as more than enough time had been wasted. I felt like I had been transported back to that blue, rainy night in my apartment, and yet this moment was so much sweeter, so much better. I wanted to stay here forever, feeling out lips moving slowly against each other, feeling the press of her skin, of her supple breasts, against my own.  
Her wings raised up to cocoon us, and I felt as though the entire rest of the – silent – world was shut out. This moment belonged only to us.

I could have remained kissing her like this for the rest of my existence, but we both had gone so long without the intimate company of another that I could feel her desperation in the way her fingers began massaging and gripping with more intensity, with how her wings wrapped around us to bring me closer against her in her embrace. I was more than happy to comply to the wishes of my Morningstar.

As her hands slid lower on my body to pick me up effortlessly, I could not help but smile against her lips and think

The rest of eternity will be made so much better with her by my side.

Perhaps we can learn from her creator’s mistakes and our new world together will be infinitely better.


End file.
